Heurese with her brother Johnny in Haiti. Johnny provides invaluable assistance to Haitian Hearts, helping patients get US visas.

Whoa! It's been a long time since I've posted in Live From Haiti. I do post about Haiti from time to time on my Facebook page. On my page, you can see the show of John's photography that we had to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Haitian Hearts. In the past 20 years, John has brought 200 patients from Haiti to the United States for heart surgery and other medical care. If you are interested in reading more about Haiti (and my life!), please friend me at Maria King Carroll.

Haitian Hearts continues on, and we thank you for your support, which makes this work possible. We currently have one patient, Heurese Joseph, in Cleveland awaiting treatment, and another, Henri Andrique, who will be coming to Colorado in early 2016. One of our biggest challenges is finding medical centers that will treat our patients.

Below is a post from my Facebook page that I wrote in October when Heurese was granted her visa.

Yesterday, Heurese Joseph was granted a visa to come to the U.S. for medical care. For the third time.The common denominator in all of these life-saving journeys is John Carroll. Heurese has been his patient since he met her in 1999, when she was weak and near death from heart problems. He sees her on most of his trips to Haiti, brings her medications, monitors her cardiac and thyroid problems, and accepts her frequent phone calls. He did the challenging and humbling work of finding medical centers to treat her and then negotiated the thicket of paperwork that it takes for a Haitian to enter the U.S. John does this for numerous patients; it's almost as if he has a medical practice in Haiti. He combines compassion, medical skill, and perseverance and treats his Haitian patients like we all want to be treated by our physicians. Thank you, John, for all your good work and your example to me and so many others. Luke e mwen--nou renmen ou anpil. Kenbe fem!

John by the Illinois River in downtown Peoria.